Contributor maybeway36

If you've got a drive with some bad sectors in it, there is no easy method (or at all that I've found) to scan the disk and mark bad sectors.

This may make Ubuntu seem to be buggy and cause errors when it really isn't Ubuntu's fault.

Not only should Ubuntu support the user's hardware, but it should also provide tools for maintenance.

Please consider releasing pre-configured virtual machines with every build. This includes Virtual PC, VMWare, and any other viable VM player.

I tried for a long time to get to know Ubuntu, but I was not going to install it unless it was contained in a VM, and I had a chance to learn and understand it.

Working properly as a VM is CRITICAL in getting worldwide acceptance. We're still in a Windows world. Mac is figuring that out. Linux needs to as well.

When a user currently boots into the 'recovery mode' from GRUB, they are presented with a command-line interface with complete root privileges and no introduction. This is just not user-friendly by any definition.

With the introduction of bullet-proof X in 8.04, it should be possible to launch some sort of gui no matter what, so how about creating a guided recovery app (in the style of 'ubiquity-only') that goes something like this:

Welcome to the Ubuntu Recovery Helper.
-If you booted into this mode because booting Ubuntu normally doesn't work, press continue.
-If you have booted into this mode by accident, you can reboot your computer and choose the option to load Ubuntu normally.
-If you are an advanced user and would like to go straight to the command-line, press Advanced.
[REBOOT] [ADVANCED] [CONTINUE]

If they press continue:
-If you know approximately what is wrong with your PC, select it below and press Continue.
-If you don't know what is wrong, press I Don't Know.
[]Graphics Card or Monitor
[]Hard Disk
[]Sound
[]etc.
[BACK] [I DON'T KNOW] [CONTINUE]

Selecting Graphics Card or Monitor would launch the X.org configuration utility, with the additional option to 'Autodetect any display hardware changes' (runs "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xorg-server" or whatever the exact code is). Selecting I Don't Know would launch the same prompt that the hardware database thingie uses, and when an error is reported would go to the appropriate item from the list above.

I'm not going to go through the entire thing, but I'm sure you get the idea. At the moment, Windows recovery mode is just an admin desktop, and Ubuntu is command-line. We're currently behind, but implementing something like this would put us years ahead. It would also make a great 'important feature' for 8.10 (like compiz-fusion was for 7.10).

[....]

Right now we have three package managers: gnome-app-install, Synaptic, and the .deb installer.

Why can't these be one application?

give gnome-app-install a backend to handle .deb files, or give it an administrative mode where it has all the power tools that synaptic has. Start somewhere. But end with one spot to manage every application installed on my system, no matter how it got there.

As a side note, another idea was automated install of tarballs. I know this will never be a perfect system because not all tarballs use the generic install method. But maybe push for some way to seperate and deal with those who do use the generic method.

There should be absolutely no reason for anyone to say that its easier to install, manage, and update apps on any other platform than Linux!

Hello!
When you use Ubuntu in any other language than English, when an error message is shown, of course, it's shown in your own language.
...But, as the best way to solve the problem, is googling it, and as most of the documentation there is in english, it would be a good thing to have a button (or a right-click entry) on that kind of message to print (or copy to the clipboard) the exact syntax of the original message. When we try to translate it ourselves, we can't really now how it was written in the original message thought there are different translations for a single message that could be used.
This would also be great to help us submit bugs.

Thanks

Brice

It seems strange to have three OpenOffice.org applications in the Office menu, but have one over in the Drawing menu. All of the OO.o applications should be in the same menu.

VMware and QEMU allow you to run Windows and Windows apps on Linux, but the app is confined to a complete virtualized desktop. This works well but in daily work it can be awkward.

Parallels for OSX has the "Coherence" feature that allows Windows applications to run as a window on the desktop. In X parlance, the application runs "rootless." Presumably the program acts as a Windows device driver or hooks GDI calls and translates them to X messages.

My idea is that this feature be added to QEMU for Ubuntu. This would permit installing Windows in a virtual machine, or utilizing the components of an existing installation of Windows on another partition to run Windows apps natively in a natural, familiar way.

For folks who absolutely require one or more proprietary apps, this would permit them to switch to an Ubuntu desktop.

EDIT: VirtualBox "Seamless Mode" looks like it does a good part of this. So maybe all that's needed is to opportunistically "find" the Windows partition during install, and do some "polish" things in terms of smooth integration.

Ubuntu 8.04 comes with the GCC compiler but without the 'build-essentials' metapackage.
This makes GCC useless; its not even possible to compile a simple "Hello world" program.

Either have GCC not installed by default or have the 'build-essential' metapackage installed by default so that GCC works.

In the LiveCD and in the installed ubuntu should have these administrative applications:

-Aptoncd, needed to create our own cd repositories.
-Gparted, there is in the Live CD but not in the installed ubuntu.
-Startupmanager needed to configure grub.
-Bum (boot-up manager), its a graphical run-level editor

Tanks for read :-)

There are some amazing tools in Linux Mint, that should be in ubuntu.
For example, mintDesktop, it gives the possiblity to Add/Remove the desktop icons, without running the gconf-editor.

Another usefull tool is mintUpdate, which gives to the user the possibility to choose the updates by rating. I mean, a kernel update is highly rated (as critical), and some firefox plugin lowly.

mintInstall allows to search a package in diverse sites like getdeb, the APT repositories, and (in a future) Linspire/Freespire's CnR. That's usefull when you don't find an App in the Add/Remove menu or via Synaptic.

mintWifi, to configure a Wireless lan

Another great thing is the possibility of uninstall an aplication by right-cliking it. Like mintMenu will have in the next Linux Mint release.

VirtualBox is an X86 virtualization software, offered under proprietary and GPL license. In February 2008 Innotek and it's VirtualBox has been acquired by Sun.

On May 2, 1.6.0 version has been released which includes major changes like:
* Solaris and Mac OS X host support
* Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
* Guest Additions for Solaris
* A webservice API
* SATA hard disk (AHCI) controller
* Experimental Physical Address Extension (PAE) support
And also some fixes:
* VMM: reduced host CPU load of idle guests
* VMM: many fixes for VT-x/SVM hardware-supported virtualization
* Storage: better write optimization, prevent images from growing unnecessarily.
* Network: support PXE booting with NAT
* USB: fixed problems with USB 2.0 devices (experimental)
* Linux host: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25
* Windows host: support for USB devices has been significantly improved; many additional USB devices now work
* Linux additions: several fixes, experimental support for RandR 1.2
* Linux additions: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25


Ubuntu Hardy should have VirtualBox Open Source Edition updated to the newest, 1.6.0 version.

BACKGROUND:
Schools should be the first place any operating system company/community promotes their operating system. Microsoft figured this out a long time ago. They practically gave away copies of Windows to K-12 schools. Schools said, "It is almost free of cost. That is all that matters to us." The students that used these Windows computers grew up, and had to buy a computer. Windows is what they learned on, so it is what they purchased and used.

WHAT DO WE NEED:
What we need to do (as an Edubuntu community) is to set up a site similar to the abandoned Schoolforge.net designed as a meeting place for everything regarding Edubuntu and Free/Open Source Software in schools. It would provide reasons other than cost as to why schools should switch to Edubuntu and Free/Open Source Software, as well as resources for anyone who wanted to get involved.

WHY US:
Edubuntu is by far the greatest educational GNU/Linux distro on the planet. It is our job to show off this amazing distro. On the Edubuntu site, there is no information whatsoever on the advantages of using it over Windows or Mac. Ubuntu already has a huge community backing it, making it the perfect candidate to start something like this.

THE BOTTOM LINE:
If we want to instill the values of openness in students, promote the use of Ubuntu around the world, and create the GNU generation, we need to make a site serving as a hub for educators and those promoting the use of Edubuntu in schools.

I would like to see a version of Ubuntu for people who don't like graphical interfaces. It could have Links or Lynx, Mp3Blaster, Vi or Emacs, Midnight Commander, feh, fbida, etc. The first version could be called Cubuntu 8.08 Consoley Codemonkey.

Here's a screenshot of what it could look like:

There are a lot of windows apps like firefox, blender ,pidgin ...etc in ubuntu installer cd. Those apps are not needed most of the users coz they are not more interest on windows.
Removing those apps make more space on ubuntu installer cd and use those space for including more necessary applications.

Right now, all other hard drive partitions on the system will appear as 80 GB Media, 19.5 GB Media, etc. Ubuntu could name the drives' desktop links as follows:
1. If the partition is formatted with NTFS, name it "Windows/NTFS Partition [size in GB]"
2. If the partition has DOS on it, name it "DOS Partition [size in GB]"
4. If the partition does not have DOS but is FAT-formatted, name it "FAT32 Partition [size in GB]"
5. If the partition is formatted with ext3, reiserfs, etc. and is either mounted under /media or is not in the fstab, name it "Linux-Native [name os fs-type] Partition (size in GB)"

These names could probably be improved, but they're better and more informative than what GNOME (and KDE) do now.

This is concerning the graphical and the text based installer.

It`s a bad habit introduces by microsoft. Do not ask questions in the middle of the installation after you did already started to copy things.

(1) The user starts the installation.
(2) He is asked if he wants to install.
(3) Make as many hardware tests as you need.
(4) Now ask all needed questions.
(5) Install Ubuntu in one run. Tell the user he can no go away for perhaps X minutes.

Otherwise it`s annoying. Input answer, wait a bit, input answer, wait again over and over again. You can improve this!

Most users do not have a PalmOS PDA. For some reason, Ubuntu developers decided to install support for PalmOS devices by default in Ubuntu (you can access it at: System / Preferences / PalmOS Devices).

I think it's not a good idea to by default install support for one specific brand of PDA's which only a tiny fraction of the users is ever going to use. Those people who do have a PalmOS PDA can easily install it afterwards.

So: Please remove support for PalmOS devices from the default install. This includes the packages: gnome-pilot, gnome-pilot-conduits.

It seems the commercial repo falls in and out of favour - back in Dapper days it was launched with quite a bit of fanfare with quite a lot of third party/commercial apps. However these quickly became out of date with security fixes (ie Opera) and often broken by kernel updates (ie VMWare) and people resorted back to getting the packages from the third parties themselves.

From memory it took a few months for the repo to reappear in Edgy but it mainly remained empty. Lately a press release went out about offering Parallels Workstation from the repo, with the option to purchase the full product from the Canonical store. Upon trying this recently it seems this package is already broken by recent updates - I've seen a few threads on the forums about it and also a bug is still unconfirmed in Launchpad.

It seems if Ubuntu is wanting to gain more commercial clout it would be good to maintain/monitor this repo more frequently?

If we're serious about getting schools to switch to Edubuntu, I think we need to move it along a little more. The website still says Happy new year. o-o; We needs some strong features in it to make schools WANT to switch from Windows.

Folding@Home is a distributed computing (DC) project designed to perform computationally intensive simulations of protein folding and other molecular dynamics (MD).

It allows people to use spare CPU cycles to contribute processing power for protein folding, so that scientists can understand cancer and other deceases.